My dad passed away Friday night. My life will never be the same.
It was both expected, and unexpected. Expected, because he had many serious health problems and had been declining for over a year. Expected, because after this last admission to the hospital, our family doctor had advised that his heart had weakened to the point where it had deteriorated his health so much that he didn't see any way he could go back to living at home alone, and had recommended dad go into a skilled nursing facility for several months of rehab, then probably into assisted living. The idea was tossed around that maybe, just maybe, after this rehab and some rest, he might be able to return home, but only with in-home health care and the like. There was no chance he'd enjoy as independent of living as he'd managed to maintain up until this last hospital stay.
But it was unexpected as well. I knew his condition was deteriorating, but I still thought we had a few weeks at least. In fact, I'd just been considering meeting with his doctor to see about having him come home to stay, with nursing care of course, instead of going into the nursing home, since it seemed time was dwindling, and I didn't want him to spend his last days there. But still ... I thought we had a couple weeks. Friday night, I never expected.
My dad has always been a fighter and a rallier. He would end up in the hospital, so weak he could barely stand up by himself, with scads of medical treatments being layered on him ... and he'd rally and end up back home, living by himself, mostly taking care of himself. This happened just weeks ago, when he got out of the hospital a few days before Easter. Our doctor ordered home health care and physical therapy, but after only about a week of that (and they only come every other day) they discharged him, saying he was doing great and didn't need them anymore.
He had continued to run his own errands, pay his own bills, do his own bankbook and banking, and handle all his own affairs right up until this last hospital stay. The only thing I'd been doing for him was the main grocery shopping, and cooking him dinner every night, so he'd get nutritious meals. He didn't know how to cook because my mom had always taken care of all that for him, until she passed away in 2004.
But on top of everything else, he had a respiratory infection this time, and all of it together was just finally too much.
My dad was a phenomenal person. He loved music, and played guitar, sang and wrote songs all his life. To say he wrote hundreds of songs would be no exaggeration - there are notebooks full of them. We have recordings of a lot of the songs, but no where near all of them. It's very sad that some of them I'll never know what tune he had in mind for them, and no one will ever hear them sung the way he wrote them.
It was from him I inherited my musical side. He bought me my first guitar when I was 11. Although he never officially 'taught' me to play the way I play today, he did teach me the basics, and I was able to go on from there. That was my life growing up ... every weekend we'd have people over, and they'd sit around and play music - in the winter, in the basement, and in the summertime, around a bonfire in the side yard. When I was old enough and could play, I joined in. In his 60s and 70s he began to hang out at the local SCOPE center, and met up with a group of other men his age who were also all musicians. They formed a band called the "Over The Hill Gang" and played music on a regular basis.
He didn't only write songs, he also wrote poetry, and won several awards in poetry contests in recent years. The one thing I couldn't get him to write, though I tried, was some of his life history - a memoir. He had told me so many interesting stories over the years, from growing up in West Virginia in the 20s and 30s, to serving in the Army in WWII, to hitchiking all over the east coast when he came back from the War, to many things that happened after he came to Warren in the 1950s, married my mother, and settled into his family life.
He was so intelligent, too, and always questioning. He loved to read books on physics and science, and also different religions or types of spirituality. Although he'd gone to church a lot when he was younger, he hadn't associated with any one religious branch for many years, because he'd made up his own 
mind what was what in the greater scheme of things, and none of the 'organized' religions quite fit his ideas. So he did his own thing.
Everyone who met him, even only once, was impressed by him. Some called him a 'gentleman,' some called him a 'sweetheart' - especially the nurses at the hospital. He always joked around with and teased them when he was there. He loved telling jokes, he loved to entertain others.
He was a philosopher and a bard, disguised as the quiet guy who just liked to maintain his lawn, plant petunias and snapdragons every spring, and take care of his family ... the world has lost a great man it barely knew, but I know what I've lost, and life will never be the same.
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